Tiger Lillies: No Hamster Lovers

For the past quarter-century, when Martyn Jacques and his band, the Tiger Lillies, have passed through airports, onlookers have reacted with some variation of “I hope you don’t mind, but are you part of a religious cult?” “I usually manage to look away and leave it to the drummer, who…

Dance Sampler: A Preview of Miami’s Active Dance Life

The cultural arts have become a thriving industry in Miami. And the city owes much of its creative success to the local dance community that’s helped place the region on the map as an artistic hub. From classical, modern, African and flamenco, to mixed-ability and old-school hip hop, there’s an…

Fences: August Wilson Returns to Miami

By many accounts, Troy Maxson, the 53-year-old protagonist of August Wilson’s Fences, is a loser. He’s the bitter breadwinner of a small Pittsburgh family who lives in the thwarted pipe dreams of his past as a once-promising baseball player. And he operates with such blinding resentment — brought on, in…

Festival Supreme: The Five Best Moments

It’s been touted as the Coachella of comedy. LOLapalooza. WitStock. But this wasn’t just any music and comedy festival. This was Festival Supreme. The title of the Santa Monica, California, comedy and music festival was befitting of the event’s hosts, the once self-proclaimed but now widely accepted greatest band in…

Pilobolus Collaborates With Penn & Teller, Brian Eno in New Show

Many are those who refer to dance as “magic.” But the dance group Pilobolus takes the reference one step further. Pilobolus, the season opener of the Knight Masterworks/Ziff Dance Series at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, will quite literally blur dance and magic in homage to escape artist…

Win Free Tickets to Pilobolus This Saturday!

Pilobolus — the acrobatic international dance troupe — has been a huge crowd pleaser here in Miami. When they return to the Ziff Ballet Opera House at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts this Friday and Saturday nights, they will bring with them five new performances, just in case…

Metamorphoses at the Arsht: Poolside Plunge Too Dry

Some of the pictures show beautiful, half-naked people wearing billowing white togas while lounging around Greek columns or descending stone steps. Other images depict the same crew positioned underwater, frolicking in an aquamarine paradise, like performers in a mermaid show without the fins. These promotional photos for the Adrienne Arsht…

Metamorphoses Isn’t the Serene Mythological Paradise You’d Expect

Some of the pictures show beautiful, half-naked people wearing billowing white togas while lounging around Greek columns or descending stone steps. Other images depict the same crew positioned underwater, frolicking in an aquamarine paradise, like performers in a mermaid show without the fins. These promotional photos for the Adrienne Arsht…

Ruthless! at Actor’s Playhouse Through November 3

Paley, the writer and lyricist of this 1992 off-Broadway comedy, could not have foreseen YouTube, Toddlers & Tiaras, or Here Comes Honey Boo Boo more than a decade later. Or maybe he could — that would explain the uncanny prescience of his durable showbiz satire about an 8-year-old diva who…

Arts Ballet Pays Tribute to Sensuous Work of Legendary Venezuelan

Vladimir Issaev’s dance company, the Arts Ballet Theater of Florida, is about to begin its 2013-2014 season, and “there will be surprises,” Issaev says. He is referring as much to the digital animation woven through his “Firebird,” as the presentation of “Pentimento,” a work by Vicente Nebrada, a legendary Venezuelan…

Sons of the Prophet at GableStage: Laughter in Suffering

According to Carol Burnett’s oft-quoted epigram, comedy is tragedy plus time. That witticism has held up for more than 20 years, though today I would excise the “plus time” part. In the age of Twitter, tragedy instantaneously becomes comedy. “Too soon” is too quaint a complaint: Comedy and tragedy always…

Sons of the Prophet at GableStage: Surprising Humor in Human Suffering

According to Carol Burnett’s oft-quoted epigram, comedy is tragedy plus time. That witticism has held up for more than 20 years, though today I would excise the “plus time” part. In the age of Twitter, tragedy instantaneously becomes comedy. “Too soon” is too quaint a complaint: Comedy and tragedy always…

Venus Rising: An African Roots Rhythmic Journey

About 20 women strong, the Venus Rising Drum and Dance Ensemble is the local cultural dance scene’s female empowerment movement expressed through West African movement and rhythms. The group will headline this year’s Miami World Music Festival, held from Sept. 19 to 22 at Florida International University’s Wertheim Center for…